


Cadence

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e17 All Things, F/M, Post-Episode: s07e17 All Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 02:44:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13940913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: The other ache between them had been easier to bear than this awkward aftermath.





	Cadence

**Author's Note:**

> For the anon who asked what their second time was like.

She’s in the back when he arrives, doing nothing, but wanting to be in the gunfighter’s spot. It had been essential to her psyche to get to the office first, to arrange herself in the framework of this next chapter.

Mulder probably knows that, though. There is nothing she can hide from him, and it makes her stomach clench.

“Hey,” he says, shrugging out of his trench coat.

Scully steps forward, behind his desk. She changed into a black pantsuit before coming in. She feels pure, powerful, in black. Her shirt is crisp and white, her heels thin and high.

“Hey,” she replies, gripping the back of his chair. She had gripped her steering wheel the same way on the drive home. On the drive here.

They gaze at one another, searching and shy. Last night stretches between them in the silence, stretches taut and snaps. Mulder looks away.

“You headed out pretty early,” he says, pulling overstuffed manila folders from his bag. He files them with great attention.

Scully sits at the desk, huffs a strand of hair from her forehead. “I needed to change, get some stuff from my apartment.” Wash him from between her thighs.

“No worries,” Mulder says, shoving the drawer shut. He takes her usual seat, crossing his long legs to the side.

Scully begins a grocery list on a legal pad. She pushes away the sense memory of him atop her, the weight of his hips against hers in his tumbled bed. She hears her own breathing, heavy and gasping and frantic. The air in the office is thick as high summer before a hailstorm.

Mulder touches her wrist, and she startles.

“If you’re this uncomfortable, we need to talk,”  he says.

“It was a mistake,” she blurts.

He looks as though she slapped him. “Scully?”

She squeezes her eyes for a beat, then looks up. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But it was. I was emotional and you were jet-lagged.”

Mulder’s face tightens. “I see.”

Her chest aches like a coronary, like a sucking wound. “I’m just…” She pauses to collect herself. “You’re my friend, my closest friend, and I won’t risk that on…” Scully waves her hand vaguely, lets it drop.

“On?” he presses, a stickler for precision now of all times.

“On a… a… night in bed.” She blushes, and is annoyed with herself. “I don’t want this to redefine everything, okay? I just want to move past it.” She returns to her list, tight-jawed. The other ache between them had been easier to bear than this awkward aftermath.

“So your usual, then? Experience and deny?” His arms are crossed.

“Sure,” she snaps. “My usual.”

He doesn’t take his coat when he leaves.

***

She’s two hours into autopsy reports when he returns, his hair wet, his tie undone. He smells like the shampoo from his gym bag.

“Running?” She squints at a picture of a hyoid bone.

“Had to shake off that jet-lag.” His tone is arch.

Silence again, dense and oppressive. Mulder lopes around the office, fidgety and cross. Scully observes him through half-closed lids, thinking of jungle cats in zoo enclosures.

Waking up on his couch last night, padding to his bathroom in her stocking feet. He’d been sprawled on the bed, bare to the waist, lashes curled against his cheeks and she -

“Come over for dinner tonight,” she offers, surprising them both.

He pauses, blinks. “What?”

Scully swallows hard, committed now. “Din-ner. At my a-part-ment.”

“You sure?”

She laughs at the awfulness of the situation. “Am I sure? Mulder, for heaven’s sake. We’re not members of rival clans. We’re not married to other people. Yes, come over.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay.” She circles a dark spot on a kidney.

***

Mulder tosses her a file from the top of the cabinet. “Banshee in Boston,” he says. “Or a death cat in Charlotte. Any preference?”

“What’s a death cat?”

“In this case, it’s a Maine Coon named Aurelius who curls up next to people who then end up dying within 12 hours.”

Scully chews her pen. “I like Boston.”

“Me too.” He glances at his watch, then says, “Sonofabitch.”

“You okay?”

Heavy sigh. “Yeah, I just….there’s that ViCAP meeting in ten minutes and I forgot. I’ll have to wing it.”

Scully stands. “Let’s go.”

“You stay here, really. It’s just bullshit funding stuff, some rubric we have to fill out from Brooks and Ressler.” He knots his tie.

She imagines them riding to the surface in the empty elevator, Mulder’s full lower lip at eye level.

Scully sits back down.

***

Cozy in yoga pants and a Stanford sweatshirt, she watches the rain from her balcony, falling like silver arrows in the Georgetown night. Scully takes a deep drag from her cigarette and exhales into the dark.

She hears the front door unlocking and panics briefly, considers stubbing out the Camel like a guilty teen. But she shrugs instead and takes a sip of wine.

The patio door slides open and there’s Mulder, tousle-headed with his shirt sleeves rolled up and a wine glass in hand.

“You’re earlier than I expected,” she says.

He shrugs. “Yeah, I had planned to go home first but traffic was a bitch, so I picked up Thai food and headed over.”

“I was planning to provide dinner,” she reminds him. “I don’t cook, but I bet I have sixty menus.”

“Domestic goddess,” he remarks, taking a hefty swallow of wine. He holds his fingers out for the cigarette, which she passes over like a joint.

He inhales happily, passes it back.

So easy, my god, they’re so easy together and last night hurts all over again. She’d never meant to sit on the edge of his bed, never meant to stroke his sleeping face, but she had and he’d kissed the crook of her elbow and suddenly, suddenly, her mouth was at his neck and his hands were at her bra and they weren’t even having sex; the sex was having them and -

“ _Scully_.”

She blinks. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, I asked if you wanted a refill.”

Scully looks at her empty glass. “I’m good.” She takes another drag off her cigarette, then passes it to Mulder to finish.

He smokes it down to the filter before crushing it in her potted azalea. “We’re such badasses,” he observes.

She tucks her hair behind her ears. The air feels good out here, unfettered and sharp. The morning is a long ways away. She shivers a little with cold and happiness.

“Chilly?”

“A little. But I’m okay, I like it out here. It’s good after so much basement air. And I love the rain.”

Mulder holds his arms out to her and she moves between them, buzzy and relaxed as the day before yesterday. Her back is against his chest, his hands joined at her navel.

“Puuurple rain…” he sings, then trails off into a hum.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” she says into the night.

He sighs against her hair. “I was being stupid. It’s a big deal and I thought I could just pretend it wasn’t.”

She shakes her head, frustrated. “Mulder, you’re missing my point.”

“Well, that’s a fucking change.”

Scully laughs, takes his wine glass from his hand and downs a swig for courage. “Sex is… not hard for me. It’s physics and biochemistry; friction and neurotransmitters. But you are an uncontrolled variable, Fox Mulder.”

He chuckles at this and she turns in his arms, looking up. It’s a much farther distance in her slippers. She presses her hands to his chest.

“Scully,” he says, a warning note. His pupils are dilated, but it could be the dark.

“It just wasn’t what I thought it would be,” she continues. “I needed to process that.”

He looks surprised. “What you thought it would be?”

She laughs, warm and bold with wine. “Oh, you never considered it until I sat on your bed?”

It’s his turn to blush now. “You’re extremely attractive, you’re beautiful, but you’re my partner and someone I respect and I-“

“I talked a good game about emotion and jet lag,” she continues, as though he hasn’t said a word. “But I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to, and I shouldn’t have made you feel otherwise.”

“Scully, I-“

She’s on her toes, her mouth against his, shirtfront gripped in her hands. Her tongue runs along the corners of his mouth, tasting tobacco and wine. She steps back, studying his face.

He swallows hard. “Let’s go eat. Dilute that merlot, huh?”

“It’s not the alcohol. I just… I wanted it to be right. We didn’t say a word last night and it left a bad taste, like pennies on the back of my tongue. But I’ll stop if you want me to stop.”

The wine glass shatters on the concrete floor when he grabs her. He’s got a hand around her back, a hand in her hair, and his tongue against her hard palate.

She slams him against the glass panel, fumbling at his shirt buttons.

He manages to slide the door open, staggering backwards as he tugs her along. Scully practically dislocates her shoulder getting it closed.

“Couch?” he mumbles, tossing his shirt to the floor.

“Bed,” she says, still determined to do things properly.

His belt and her sweatshirt mark their path to her room.

Mulder sits on her bed, gorgeous and bare-chested in the dim light. “Come here,” he says, in low voice.

Scully walks to him in her boring white bra and faded leggings, feeling as beautiful as she ever has.

He hooks his fingers in her waistband, tugs her between his knees. “You look fantastic,” he says, nuzzling her breasts with his five o’clock shadow.

Scully purrs his name for the novelty of it, runs her nails along his scalp.

He traces the dip of her waist, her back, then unhooks her bra with one hand.

She slides it off her arms. “That’s very smooth.”

Mulder grins. “I’ve been trying to do it via telekinesis for a while now, but no luck.”

“We’ll practice. Recreate the 1981 Ziran Zazhi methodology.”

He licks her navel. “That is the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“With or without a financial incentive?”

He nips her for that one, and tugs her onto his lap.

Scully pushes his shoulders so that he’s lying across her bed, trousers dipping below his hips. His erection is between her thighs and she presses herself against it for the sheer agonizing joy of anticipation.

Mulder, horizontal, makes a wounded noise. He fumbles at his buttons and zipper, grey boxers tenting out.

Scully slips her fingers into the open vent of them, stroking the smooth skin inside. He’s hot and silky in her hand, the veins taut beneath her thumb. He groans again, twitching.

“Scully,” he rasps, “I’m perilously close to forty and I can’t make promises.”

She eases his trousers and boxers off, letting them slip to the floor. Takes his socks off too, because she finds them undignified.

She straddles him again, planes her hands along his well-muscled chest. She kneads his shoulders with her fingers.

His arms are at his sides, head on her pillows. “You look so serious,” he murmurs.

“I am,” she says. “I’m memorizing you.”

He closes his eyes and she kisses them, nibbles the outline of his mouth. Mulder’s hands cup her breasts, rolling her nipples between his thumb and forefinger. He lifts his head to catch one in his teeth, his salt-scoured taste buds raising goosebumps along her entire body.

Her fingers are tight in his hair as he licks away last night. Mulder takes her other nipple in his mouth now, leaving the first tight and aching. She grinds her hips against his.

Mulder’s hands at her waist again, pulling her pants off and her underwear with them. His pubic hair is coarse against her shaky thighs.

He’s looking at her now, with his changeable eyes and coltish lashes. He slips two fingers inside of her and she’s so wet that it’s almost embarrassing.

Scully pushes her hips against his palm and it’s all so different than twenty-four hours ago; that hungry nameless coupling matched to the howling wind. She doesn’t recall even saying his name.

His lips are parted as she moves, tongue between his teeth, and she doesn’t want it to be over like this but there’s a very good chance it will be with his fingers like that and Scully is panting now with her head hung forward and she closes her eyes and she-

He withdraws his fingers; she groans in protest and even Jesus wept.

She looks at him with grave reproach. “Muld-“

He presses his slick fingers to her lips. “Shhh.”

She grazes them with her teeth, sucks them against the roof of her mouth. They’re watching each other, her eyes the Pacific and his the Atlantic and the taste of the sea on her tongue.

“Scully,” he breathes, and there is no choice she would have made in her entire life if it wouldn’t have led her here to listen to this man say her surname like that.

She shifts backwards so that he’s inside her, friction and neurotransmitters and nerves and love.

Mulder groans, his thumb at her clitoris,

She tosses her head back, her spine a fluid thing, and he’s thrusting up into her body like they’ve done this a thousand times.

The world narrows to her room, her bed, the bud of tissue beneath Mulder’s touch. She calls his name and her spine isn’t liquid now; it’s electric and it pulses loops of pleasure through her brain and peripheral nerves.

She wants to collapse against his chest, but stays upright as Mulder grips her hips, moving faster, thrusts shorter, until he shudders and falls back against the pillows again.

She rolls to her side, breathless. He kisses her damp temples, says her name in a voice like raw silk.

Scully tugs the blankets over them, presses her cooling body along his torso. Mulder falls asleep with his hand at the small of her back.

She stays awake for a while listening to the rain, to their hearts, to the unexpected syncopation of her life.

 

 


End file.
